X owner Elon Musk goes on a new rant against Bob Iger as Disney's advertising and content boycott of the platform continues

Dec 07, 2023 in "The Walt Disney Company"

Posted: Thursday December 7, 2023 12:46pm ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

X owner Elon Musk posted a series of jabs at Disney CEO Bob Iger today as the company's boycott of the social media platform continues.

Today's posts by Musk ask why Disney does not suspend advertising on competitor platforms owned by Meta, including Facebook and Instagram.

In one post, Musk said, "Bob Eiger thinks it's cool to advertise next to child exploitation material. Real stand up guy." Followed up by, "Why no advertiser boycott, Bob Eiger? You are endorsing this material!" He went on to link to a right-wing satire outlet taking shots at Iger.

The billionaire owner of X, SpaceX, and Tesla appears unable to correctly spell the Disney CEO's name, repeatedly referring to him as "Bob Eiger."

Musk also called for Iger to be fired, saying, "He should be fired immediately. Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company."

Major corporations, including Disney, Apple, IBM, Paramount, Warner Bros., Walmart, and Discovery, said they would pause advertising on X following antisemitic comments made by Musk.

Speaking at the New York Times Dealbook Conference in late November, Iger said he had not yet revisited the concerns with X since the beginning of the boycott.

At the same conference and speaking after Iger, Musk went on a wild tirade against the Disney CEO, saying "If someone is going to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go #### yourself. Go #### yourself." He then said, waving his hand, "Hey Bob, if you're in the audience."

Disney stepped up its advertising boycott on X by withholding adding new content to the platform on several of its accounts. The official @DisneyParks account stopped posting from November 17 through November 28, added a couple of posts at the end of the month, and has posted nothing in December. Significantly, Disney opened a new fireworks show and a new neighborhood of EPCOT in early December, which would typically have been heavily promoted on X.

Despite halting some of its accounts, Disney continues to post on X from some of its services, including ABC News.

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Eric Graham3 days ago

personally, i think he is very awesome! when i went to Kennedy Space Center in Florida, my wife thought it was going to be very cheesy. As it turned out, she loved it so much. I LOVED the movie The Right Stuff, and LOVED the space shuttle program. When I was in high school every week religiously we would have current events day for some dumb class a coach taught and mine was always about the Star Wars System for the US for countering other weapons. And, also while we were there a SpaceX rocket was on the launchpad and they took us right up to the launchpad. I've posted about the way that his rockets land so incredulously back on the launch pad after immediate take off! So incredibly amazingly awesome!!!!!

DonniePeverley3 days ago

This. You can see the BOTS a mile off. Interesting take, whilst i was travelling in India ... there was a company that was handling social media content for various businesses. They had about 100 cheap mobile phones to keep a different IP address, and there profession would be to just spam the social media with adverts in a way that wasn't obvious - day in day out. But it was just two guys.

WorldExplorer4 days ago

Didn't even last a full year.

Andrew C4 days ago

I too dropped X prior to Elon like the previous poster. I have a general hatred of social media as I think it has hurt society more than helped, especially amongst younger people. Also, the scrolling addiction is real. I keep Facebook almost solely for updates from my kids' schools as well as community related stuff.

Brian4 days ago

They've actually done a very good job in purging the bots. When Elon first took over there were crypto and "adult activities" bots that would tag me and as many other users as they could about five times a day. I haven't seen one now for the better part of the year. The experience on X is a lot more enjoyable than Facebook is, at least for me. I've noticed that Facebook has far less content from my 'friends' than it used to, so I see stuff from random pages and groups that I have little to no interest in. I gather that this is due to both a decline in engagement from the average user, as well as algorithmic changes. Just this morning I saw four posts in a row with the same picture of Imelda Staunton receiving her honors from Prince William. It was nice and all, but once was enough. X, on the other hand, shows me stuff I'm actually interested in and from the people I choose to follow, and in the 'For You' section, it does a great job of mixing in people I follow alongside that which I actually enjoy seeing.

J45464 days ago

half of x users are bots, if not more....I got of twitter years ago before elon owned it because its trash

Andrew C4 days ago

611 million compared to 16 million...or something like that. I never even heard of it until the other week when I read some of the Hollywood elite were throwing their typical hissy fits... Although I am probably not one to talk as I dropped WhatsApp to shift to Telegram. :hilarious:

Brian4 days ago

Active daily users on Bluesky is still peanuts at least when compared to X.

Tha Realest4 days ago

Think how much better ad penetration they could get on Bluesky. Thousands of new users generally aligned with the company’s prerogatives.

peng4 days ago

Gross, but expected. I know this goes into the no politics rule, but Elon is trigger happy with lawsuits with people that oppose him, as we saw with him suing people that stopped advertising on twitter (I will never call it X). People have begun moving off using it, but not enough to ignore it altogether sadly, better to get on the Space Karen's good graces now, unless he begs Trump to go after them DeSantis did last year.

Splash4eva7 days ago

Did anyone really believe otherwise?

ToTBellHop7 days ago

Gross

Brian7 days ago

Evidently, yes. Disney has resumed advertising on X. https://www.adweek.com/media/advertisers-returning-to-x/

BrianApr 15, 2024

Scott's comparison made me lol: